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Talk of Rays re-locating to Montreal a smokescreen: Griffin

Here is the pessimist’s view of the current situation: Montreal is being used, and Expos fans should disregard and ignore it all.

More than 90,000 fans turned out at Olympic Stadium when the Jays and Mets played two exhibition games back in March. Those numbers show that baseball remains a viable opportunity in Montreal. (Carlos Osorio / Toronto Star)

SAN FRANCISCO—On Saturday, New York Daily News veteran baseball scribe Bill Madden, whose name is on a plaque at Cooperstown, wrote a column from the World Series on the negative impact to the Rays franchise of the departure of GM Andrew Friedman and manager Joe Maddon.

Near the end, he quietly dropped a bombshell, one that meant more to some than others. His sources tell him Tampa has recently explored the possibility of moving the Rays and returning major-league baseball to Montreal.

It read: “(Stuart) Sternberg has had discussions with wealthy Wall Street associates about moving the Rays to Montreal, which has been without a major-league franchise since the Expos were transferred to Washington in 2005.” His sources didn’t name any of the proposed investors.

This strategy of threatening to move a sports franchise has repeated itself in major professional sports time after time, team after team, throughout history. An owner looking for new stadium public funding feigns frustration then looks around for a city that has shown a desire for a team of its own. Ownership threatens to move until one or various levels of government pony up, and they usually do.

The threats are most often smokescreens never intended to reach fruition. In most cases, the destination city gets all excited, with local politicians and various celebrities rallying behind the possible acquisition. Recall the 1976 San Francisco Giants and their close-to-completion move to Toronto. That almost happened until Bob Lurie stepped up to purchase the club, keeping it at Candlestick.

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Recall the ’92 Giants and their threatened move to Tampa Bay. They were having trouble with a new ballpark, but then grocery magnate Peter Magowan bought the team and worked with San Francisco politicians to build beautiful Pac Bell Park, now AT&T. The key was that the building itself was built with no public funding, but there were huge tax breaks and various levels of government paid for the infrastructure needed to make the new facility viable.

However in Montreal, from 1992 to 2004, there was never a chance of government funding for a downtown ballpark when it could have made a difference. The closest would have been if the ’94 season was played to completion and the Expos had gone to the World Series. But after the strike, after Jeffrey Loria, after MLB tried to contract then purchased the team and ran it into the ground, after all that negativism, there was no chance of keeping the club in La Belle Province.

Here is the pessimist’s view of the current situation: Montreal is being used, and Expos fans should disregard and ignore so as not to be disappointed.

But there’s an optimist’s viewpoint to all this as well.

Clearly, Expos Nation has made a big impression on MLB with the two exhibition games that drew 96,000 fans to Olympic Stadium in March. That success caught MLB’s attention, and also those that had bought into the anti-Montreal hype that it was not a baseball town and made them re-think.

There are stadium plans in existence for a 35,000-seat venue downtown that can be dusted off. Mayor Denis Coderre, an enthusiastic baseball fan I met at the banquet honouring the ’94 Expos, will do everything in his power to help. But, of course, his power doesn’t include public money. That means there will still have to be local wealth step up and it can’t be mysterious “Wall Street associates.”

What makes this Rays-to-Montreal rumour somewhat possible, even if it is not Sternberg’s present intention, is that the current situation of the Rays in Tampa/St. Pete is dire. Nobody sees light at the end of the Sunshine Skyway. The principal owner, Sternberg will never get another stadium financing deal anything close to Loria’s in Miami. The fallout from that sweetheart deal, the highway robbery of Florida taxpayers and politicians, has closed that door.

So if public funding is not going to happen for the Tampa franchise, where is new stadium money coming from? Nowhere.

The concern about the Rays’ downward spiral is that they won consistently with the influence of Maddon as manager, and now he’s gone. They never had a winning record then went to the ’08 World Series in Maddon’s third year. They’ve been consistent contenders every season since then until this past summer. But they are a small market with small revenue streams and baseball is now big business.

Attendance has always been disappointing and Tropicana Field is one of the four worst parks in baseball. Even in those winning seasons with Maddon, the World Series year and the two following topped out at attendances of just over 1.8 million fans at the horrible baseball venue. Upper deck beaches, cigar bars — nothing worked. So unless the Rays get a new stadium, there is a good chance they won’t survive. Nobody, including owners, players or the commissioner wants a welfare franchise.

The public funding tap in the United States seems to have been turned off. Seattle leveraged Safeco Field after the ’95 playoffs when they beat the Yankees in a dramatic ALDS. That didn’t happen in Tampa after ’08 and if this team has another losing season, attendance will crash.

The dramatic March success of the Mets and the Jays exhibition games arrived at just the right time. Montreal had been without its baseball team for a decade. Major League Baseball was ready to give up on the city and let the Expos fade into the mists of time, but 96,000 fans served up a wake-up call that Montreal can be a viable baseball town.

Far moreso, in fact, than Tampa/St. Pete.

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